sitebulletins

Sorry this is coming on a Saturday but I just got back from Chicago and figured best to get it out sooner than later.

So as you’ve no doubt noticed, the new site is taking awhile to roll out. Yes it is still happening, but each setback has pushed back the timetable to the point where we’re getting up against the start of the season. Right now they’ve given us a very barebones dev site (above) to find all the glowing errors and make sure it feels like it should. Then we’ll have a beta version, with content from the main site, for beta users to play with. We’d rather do it right than throw out a half-baked solution.

I want to reiterate that HUEL—which is what we're finally getting Ann Arbor-based site developer Human Element to call themselves—have been awesome. A site as old as ours can develop some pretty big hurdles to modernization and previous comers were never able to get past Level 1. HUEL is now on 7, and have already worked through more unforeseen monkey wrenches than I’ve bothered to count. Without them I don’t know if this ever happens.

I want to let everyone know that both the HUEL and MGoBlog staff are diligently working on the site upgrade every day, and while it was our goal to have the new site up before the football season, software is hard. We are performing a 2-version upgrade from Drupal 6 to 8 while maintaining current required functionality, data and user history. At the same time we are adding new functionality and features as part of a complete overhaul of the user experience and site design. We have made significant progress and have solved all the major technical issues but we haven’t had the time for proper user engagement and beta testing and do not want to want to push a product that isn’t up to our quality standards.

It is our short term goal to stabilize the existing site’s hosting (thanks Nexcess!), while finishing the last pieces of the upgrade and redesign. We are going to use this extended time period to sync data from the current site to the new site on a schedule and allow selected BETA testers to provide feedback until both teams feel the site is ready for initial release. We will then move into a cycle of maintenance and improvement that should continue to improve the user experience over the next few years.

The new site will be bigger, stronger, faster—but it’s just taking a little longer than we hoped.

--Jason

You may see the site go offline at times in the middle of the nights as we prepare to shift to Nexcess servers from the one Brian and his brother built years ago.

THE DEVELOPERS

We’ve been working with a local outfit named Human Element. You’ve probably passed by their Kerrytown office at the corner of Detroit and Beakes (and Division and Summit and Carey and High and… you know the junction) a thousand times. Unlike our previous attempts at redeveloping the site they’re established enough to have a team and a schedule they’ve actually managed to stick to.

We’ve insisted they go by “HUEL” for obvious reasons.

Despite all the curveballs we could come up with from a 10-year-old site on a no longer supported platform, this is happening, and on time. I can’t recommend these guys enough.

THE NEW LOOK

Since we’re deep into the design phase, we saw no reason to keep it to ourselves. So here’s a preview of what we’re sort of going to look like in a couple of months (click each to see a larger size):

Normal front page

Front page when we
have a major feature

Inside an article

Let me say a few things about what you’re looking at:

No that’s not the header. That’s something one of the HUEL guys whipped up in 30 seconds. We’ve engaged MonuMental to design the new official header. That’s still in the works but his initial thoughts are encouraging:

How about Harbaugh as Conan the Barbarian on a mountain of his enemies' skulls (helmets) with background landscape and Easter eggs inspired by the last few years (Florida palm trees, Rome skyline, stacks of milk bottles) and a snarling oversized Wolverine as his companion?

Open to suggestions about what he is wielding overhead. Maybe a football exploding with light and lightning?

It’s going to be a lot wider, since screens have become so.

The front page has two modes. Normally there will be some boxes on the top with the latest football article, the latest recruiting article, the latest podcast, and a t-shirt or HTTV something from our store or our top sponsor UGP—these boxes will change based on whatever’s going on at the moment. When we have a featured article (e.g. UFR) it goes to mode 2, with the feature dominating the top and the boxes taking a break.

Diaries and the Board are staying put, but your login is moving to the upper-right.

The comments will be threaded into boxes, but after a 5 boxes they’ll stop shrinking and just appear underneath. You’ll be able to minimize a box to hide a part of the conversation and focus on the one you’re having.

Some users will have little icons next to their names. These will signify things like this person is the OP, or one of our staff, or a moderator, or trusted contributor. Still deciding on how many badges we need—might just be site personnel and hot users (people who recently got a lot of upvotes in that thread).

Your MGoPoints should carry over to the new site. Apparently the 3rd party module for that hasn’t been upgraded to Drupal 8 so we may have to create our own, but if it’s possible it will happen.

We’ll be moving to a new server that should be able to handle a much greater load, so this place won’t become a disaster during high traffic events.

Hey, so you may have noticed that things are slightly busted around here. The site's been in more or less the same state since I cobbled it together some seven years ago, with tweaks here and there and an ever-increasing amount of metal on the back end. This was fine; it's gotten increasingly less fine as time goes on. Let's bring in bolded alter-ego.

Why does your site look like Geocities still?

cumong man

Pets.com?

this was a bad idea

Does Marissa Meyer run this place or what?

Finding good developers turns out to be hard. Twice I've engaged professionals to do a thing, and neither time have the professionals actually managed to do the thing. A revamp of the comment section simply did not work; a planned site overhaul set to launch last summer obviously did not.

I think this is about to change. A few weeks ago I met with a gentleman from Human Element, a local outfit. They're taking over the stalled site revamp. HUEL* has several things going for it. They are local, so keeping in contact is easy. They have 30 people, so they have become good enough at what they do to grow significantly. They're big enough that they've got experience in whatever CMS you would throw at them. Their wifi password is reassuringly nerdy.

For the first time in a while I'm optimistic this will get done and before football season.

*[Referring to them as HE was weirdly religious and quickly discarded. HUEL had much to recommend it.

Internally they go by HEI but you will agree that HUEL is superior morally and ethically.]

But I hate change.

Indeed you do. There will be some changes. The most obvious will be a magazine-style front page. This will require some extra clicking but with the amount of #content on the site, especially during football season, we feel it is required. Not that much else will change, at least at first. The site revamp is a necessary first step before moving forward.

But we can look forward to some new features?

The new design is responsive, which means it'll look good on tablets and phones. It'll be professionally designed, so you'll know that the navigation menu above has useful things that drop down. (Do you know that?) You'll be able to get to the second page of the board without clicking on the mgoboard link above. Points will be exchangeable for Venezuelan bolivars. The site should be much faster and less prone to going down when traffic spikes.

Going forward a continued relationship with HUEL should allow us to implement some larger changes, but let's eat one apple at a time.

What about the app(s)?

Those will also be revamped when the site re-launches. They have to get massively updated anyway since the APIs they ping will change so it'll be a refresh for both. Apologies for the situation with the MGoBlog HD app; I am an Android person and did not know that the standard app had so many problems. Unfortunately the HD app was never authorized and when we were looking for performance improvements before Signing Day it stood out as a big drag.

Please bear with us. That should be fixed when the site re-launches. Your patience will be rewarded. With bolivars, but rewarded all the same.

WHEN: Approximately 5-7 Friday every week during football season. We're thinking it's going to be more like 90 minutes than two hours, but we'll see. Whatever. I do what I want.

WHY: People veritably clamor for more audio content, and MGoRadio is no more for reasons outside of our control. Moving the show to Friday will make it much less of a rehash of the regular podcast: I'll have UFR done by then and Ace will have broken down the opponent in detail.

WHERE:Historic Moe's Sport Shop! Our live MGoRadio at Moe's was a great success and it was a natural fit since it's right downtown. You can stop by and hit up dinner afterwards, or go to Ashley's, that sort of thing.

HOW: We will be streaming live on Youtube, which seems like the best and easiest option for multiplatform. A downloadable podcast version will go up shortly after the completion for people who want to listen on their way to the game on Saturday morning.